With support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, The Wild Center (TWC) engaged Insight Evaluation Services (IES) to assess the impact of specific outreach activities of the Northern New York Maple Project between September 2013 and September 2015. Data for this two-year evaluation study were collected via in-depth telephone interviews conducted with a total of 25 participants, including 16 Tupper Tappers (Tupper Lake area residents who engaged in backyard tapping to provide sap for syrup production at the museum through the Community Maple Project), four local school teachers
The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a formative evaluation of proposed exhibits for “The Future of the City Lab,” an interactive gallery to be featured in the New York At Its Core exhibition that invites visitors to think about and help design the future of New York City.
How did we approach this study?
The goal of the study was to explore visitors’ opinions and understandings of five specific exhibits—the Introduction Text, the Big Challenges Wall, a Neighborhood Exploration, the “Density” iPad Activity, and the Selfie
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Science of Sharing project (SoS) was a collaboration between the Exploratorium, the Museum of Life and Science, Dialogue Social Enterprise and The Heroic Imagination Project. SoS included two major components for members of the public to engage with: a permanent collection of interactive, multi-user exhibits at the Exploratorium, and a series of social-media based activities called Experimonths. SoS exhibits and Experimonths were designed to allow visitors to experiment with cooperation, trust, and social dilemmas, connect those experiences to
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the world's largest experimental facilities, where thousands of scientists and engineers from over 100 countries collaborate to shed new light on the workings of our universe. As LHC research, such as the discovery of the Higgs boson, continues to hit the news in future years, it will be important for educators in informal science institutions to understand how to engage their visiting public's interests and curiosities and shape their understanding regarding this leading edge research. Funded by
The Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, in collaboration with several informal science education and other cultural and business organizations in San Diego, Chicago, and Worcester, MA are implementing a research and development project that investigates a range of possible approaches for stimulating the development of 21st Century creativity skills and innovative processes at the interface between informal STEM learning and methods for creative thinking. The goal of the research is to advance understanding of the potential impacts of creative thinking methods on the public's understanding of and engagement with STEM, with a focus on 21st Century workforce skills of teens and adults. The goal of the project's development activities is to experiment with a variety of "innovation incubator" models in cities around the country. Modeled on business "incubators" or "accelerators" that are designed to foster and accelerate innovation and creativity, these STEM incubators generate collaborations of different professionals and the public around STEM education and other STEM-related topics of local interest that can be explored with the help of creative learning methodologies such as innovative methods to generate creative ideas, ideas for transforming one STEM idea to others, drawing on visual and graphical ideas, improvisation, narrative writing, and the process of using innovative visual displays of information for creating visual roadmaps. Hosting the project's incubators are the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (San Diego), the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) and the EcoTarium (Worcester, MA). National partners are the Association of Science-Technology Centers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Americans for the Arts. Activities will include: the formation and collaborative processes of three incubator sites, a research study, the development of a creative thinking curriculum infused into science education, professional development based on the curriculum, public engagement events and exhibits, a project website and tools for social networking, and project evaluation. A national advisory council includes professionals in education, science, creativity, and business.
Water for Life (WfL) is a full scale development youth and community based program; centered on freshwater literacy, water conservation and rainwater harvesting led by the Pacific Resources for Education Learning (PREL) in Hawaii. The goals of the project are to: (a) promote an understanding of water conservation and stewardship in areas lacking adequate quality water supplies and (b) build local capacity among rural communities to develop and employ site specific freshwater harvesting strategies proven to improve water quality. Rural communities within four Pacific Island entities in the U.S. affiliated Freely Associated States (FAS) will participate in WfL activities. PREL is collaborating with a host of organizations (such as the Federated States of Micronesia National Department of Education, Marshall Islands Conservation Society, and the Micronesian Conservation Trust, etc.) to develop and implement all phases of the initiative. This work is already improving the quality of life for hundreds of people in the FAS through water conversation education and improved water quality in local areas. Working closely with site-embedded PREL staff, Core Teams at each site - consisting of 4-6 local leaders from environmental agencies, water/sanitation systems, and education institutions - participated in a 5-day professional learning immersion in May, 2013, to buld capacities to develop and facilitate water conservation and catchment activities at the four target sites in the FAS. The Core Team members at each site now are recruiting and collaborating with local community members to implement site-specific projects that both educate and provide enhanced access to high quality drinking water. Both adults and youth are now engaging in a spectrum of proejcts that address loca needs and priorities through site-specific service learning activities. The site-specific focus in each locale, determined by the local Core Team, is distinct. In Palau, the Core Team has built broader community awareness of water conservation issues, raised the issue of water security in national conversations, engaged remote communities in improving natural rainwater drainage collection systems, and produced youth-oriented educational materials focused on local sites. In Yap, the Core Team members have collaborated with public utilities to install first-flush diverters into community rainwater catchment systems on Yap proper, and now are installing these devices in rainwater catchment systems on Yap's neighbor islands. In Chuuk, groundwater springs in remote communities are being upgraded for improved storage capacity, protection against contamination, and better public access. In Majuro (RMI), public school rainwater catchment systems are being repaired, repainted, cleaned, and upgraded so that schools can and will provide adequate drinking water to students (and to broader segments of the community during droughts). Broad segments of communities, including school classes and clubs, church and civic groups, etc. are becoming increasingly involved in building better water security and resilience for their communities, in preparation for a predicted drought, predicted to hit in the winter of 2014-2015, brought on by an El Nino event now edevelopig in the eastern Pacific. Water for Life has produced a range of locally relevant educational materials, including books, pamphlets, flyers, etc., some in English and others in local languages. Posters and billboards are being produced to enhance and maintain public awareness. Infrastructure projects are enabling better collection of more, higher quality water for drinking. A full-scale water handbook is under development, and this will serve as a basis for a self-contained water 'course' that will be offered through local community colleges. The experiences of project participants are being captured, analyzed, and reported in front-end, formative, and sumative evaluations conducted by David Heil & Associates. Thousands of individuals, comprising large segments of the participating countries' populations, will be directly impacted by the project. The results will be applicable to other remote and rural communities outside of the Pacific distressed by poor water quality and ineffective freshwater harvesting systems.
The United States Botanic Garden (USBG) contracted RK&A to explore visitors’ interest in and understanding of the design and interpretation presented in four conservatory rooms—Rare and Endangered Species, Plant Adaptations, Medicinal Plants, and Garden Primeval. Two rooms were quite small and the other two rooms were larger. Each room was designed to support a theme and included a variety of signage to support the theme (e.g., plant ID signs, ephemeral signs, thematic signs). Findings from this study will be used in part to inform a new interpretive strategy for the Garden. How did we
The United States Botanic Garden (USBG) contracted RK&A to explore visitors’ interest in and understanding of proposed “Context Clues.” A Context Clue is an interpretive strategy that uses images, product samples or other objects, and interpretive text to assist visitors in connecting to the big idea: plants are important to people. How did we approach this study? The overall purpose of the evaluation was to determine how to best use Context Clues to communicate the relationship between plants and people. Therefore, RK&A interviewed 40 walk-in visitors who experienced three Context Clues in
Pushing the Limits: Making Sense of Science (PTL) is an NSF-funded program designed to build the capacity of rural and small libraries to provide programming to enhance public understanding of science and math. PTL provides professional support, technical assistance, specially produced video segments, and funding for library professionals and their local science partners to co-facilitate a series of science café-style public discussions with adult patrons. In Phase I of the PTL project (September 2012-August 2013), 20 rural and small libraries piloted the program. In Phase II (September 2013
Pushing the Limits: Making Sense of Science (PTL) is an NSF-funded program designed to build the capacity of rural and small libraries to enhance public understanding of science and math. The program provides professional support, technical assistance, and funding for librarians and local science partners to co-facilitate a series of science café-style guided public discussions with adult patrons using books and specially produced video segments. External evaluator Goodman Research Group, Inc. conducted the second formative evaluation, focusing on the professional development (PD) for the
This multiplatform media and science center project is designed to engage audiences in humanity's deepest questions like the nature of love, reality, time and death in both scientific and humanistic terms. Project deliverables include 5 hour-long radio programs for broadcast on NPR stations, public events/museum exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, kiosks in venues throughout the city, and a social media engagement campaign. The audience of the project is large and diverse using mass media and the internet. But the project will specifically target young, online, and minority audiences using various strategies. The project is designed to help a diverse audience understand the impact of new scientific developments as well as the basic science, technology, engineering and math needed to be responsible, informed citizens. Innovative elements of the project include the unique format of the radio programs that explore complex topics in an engaging and compelling way, the visitor engagement strategy at the Exploratorium, and the social media strategy that reaches niche audiences who might never listen to the radio broadcasts, but find the podcasts and blogs engaging. The Exploratorium will be opening a new building in 2013 and will include exhibits and programs that are testing grounds for this project. This is a new model that aligns the radio content with exhibitions, social media, and in person events at the Exploratorium, providing a unique holistic approach. The project is designed to inspire people to think and talk about science and want to find out more. The evaluation will measure the impacts on the targeted audiences reached by each of the key delivery methods. Data will be collected using focus groups; intercept interviews with people in public places, and longitudinal panels. The focus will be on 5 targeted audiences (young adults, families with children, non-NPR listeners, underrepresented minorities, and adults without college experience). This comprehensive evaluation will likely contribute important knowledge to the field based on this multiple-platform collaborative model.
This project is intended to develop a model for STEM education through local libraries. There are several unique features in this endeavor. The model is being aimed at rural libraries and adult residents that are geographically remote from typical venues such as museums, zoos, and science centers. According to the 2000 census, there are 50 million individuals in this designation and the size of the group is increasing and becoming more diverse. Efforts to impact diverse audiences who are economically disadvantaged will be part of the plan. In many rural locations there are few community venues, but libraries are often present. The American Library Association and the Association Rural and Small Libraries have begun the reinvention of these libraries so they can become more attuned to the communities in which they are apart. Thus, this project is an effort to find new ways of communicating STEM concepts to a reasonably large underserved group. The design is to derive a "unit of knowledge enhancement" (some portion of Climate Change, for example) through a hybrid combination of book-club and scientific cafe further augmented with videos and web materials. Another part of the design is to enhance the base STEM knowledge of library staff and to associate the knowledge unit with an individual who has the specific STEM topic knowledge for a specific unit. Considerable effort shall be expended in developing the models for staff knowledge enhancement with a progressive number of librarians in training from 8 to 20 to 135. To build the content library model, five units of knowledge will be devised and circulated to participating libraries. Evaluation of the project includes front end, formative and summative by the Goodman Research Group. In addition to the "units of knowledge enhancement," the major results will be the model on how best to relate and educate citizens in rural environments and how to educate the library staff.